Riding with empty fin inserts?

08-13-2012, 07:13 AM

Hi all

I ride the dominator. It has 5 fin inserts, and I currently use the 3-fin setup, so there's two empty inserts.
It creates a drag. I cut off two old fins I had extra to fill up the holes and it really make a big difference.

I think it would be great if the boards could come with one or two fin bases depending on the fin setup (quad or thruster)

We found that people weren't using the provided fins when purchasing our standard surfboards and therefore stopped providing them since most would just use their own preferred fin type. On our kiteboard lineup we do provide fins (5 fin boards come with quad setup, 3 fin boards come with tri setup) but we don't have plans to provide blank inserts at this time. If you need the blanks they can be found at http://www.thesurfboardwarehouse.com...12in-34in.aspx

Comment

I ride the dominator. It has 5 fin inserts, and I currently use the 3-fin setup, so there's two empty inserts.
It creates a drag. I cut off two old fins I had extra to fill up the holes and it really make a big difference.

I think it would be great if the boards could come with one or two fin bases depending on the fin setup (quad or thruster)

EFFISK,

That is an interesting remark. I personally have never heard of the empty fin boxes creating any type of drag. You may be correct, but I really don't think they do...being that a 5 fin setup has been going long enough even on the surf side of things. They do make inserts...but again, I really don't think they create a negative force on kiting. I have been using a 5 fin for quite some time and have never noticed it. Enjoy!

On the surf side of things I never used to think about it until Kelly said adding a 5th fin to his quad set up added speed, as well as better directional control. Adding a 5th fin should have created more drag but it didn't and I started to reason that it was because it plugged the open fin box (or at least one slot, as the FCS knubster does) which might have been creating some drag. So I started playing around with small stabiliser fins and they certainly seemed to add speed, as well as the other characteristics.

In the case of kite boarding I would not have thought it really mattered anyway as you have a kite pulling you along, you can balance a little extra drag with a bigger kite I suppose, for surfing though it seems to make a difference as we have no other power except the wave's.

Comment

I was a windsurfer before I started kitesurfing. Some windsurfing boards come with three fin inserts, and you can use them with a single fin, twinzer or thruster setup depending on the board. I always used blank inserts. Empty inserts caused so much drag it just killed the speed, and increased the chances of spinning out. You could see the difference in the wake of the board: nice and smooth with the blank inserts, turbulent and noisy without. I don't remember of a windsurfer not using blank inserts on such boards in a single fin setup. You go faster, with a better control.